About The ProductionSprung from the fertile imaginations of cult filmmakers Joss Whedon ("Buffy The
Vampire Slayer," "Dollhouse," the upcoming The Avengers) and Drew Goddard (Cloverfield,
"Buffy The Vampire Slayer," "Angel," "Lost"), Lionsgate's THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
begins like any generic horror film might: a rambunctious group of five college
friends steal away for a weekend of debauchery in an isolated country cabin,
only to be attacked by horrific supernatural creatures in a night of endless
terror and bloodshed. Sound familiar? Just wait. As the teens begin to exhibit
standard horror movie behavior, a group of technicians in a control room are
scrutinizing, and sometimes even controlling, every move the terrified kids
make. The story behind their involvement is just the tip of the iceberg of a
fantastical, I-can't-believe-this-is-happening odyssey that explodes the
conventions of the horror genre in a giddy sugar rush of bloody mayhem, wild
imagination and sly humor.

Explains Goddard, "On one level, CABIN functions as your classic horror film.
It's the sort of movie where you grab your popcorn and hold your date tight
while you watch five teenagers head to the woods and encounter terrible things.
But it's also our version of that type of movie. Which means things get a lot
more insane than you might expect."

CABIN actor Chris Hemsworth, known to most audiences as the titular hero in last
summer's hit, Thor, remembers the first time he read Goddard's and Whedon's
script. "At first I thought, Oh, this is a regular horror movie. I don't get it.
And then it just continued to unfold and open up and blow me away every page. It
just got crazier and crazier and crazier until - well, until never. It just
doesn't stop. It leads you down a path that seems recognizable, and slowly it
completely subverts everything you know."

Goddard and Whedon have crafted a love letter to the horror genre that pays
homage to fright classics ranging from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead to Dario Argento's
Suspiria. But while it clearly respects its predecessors, THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
also questions the very tropes it's re-enacting. "I love horror," explains
Whedon. "But the plots are becoming more and more predictable. The killings are
more and more disgusting. The kids are becoming more and more expendable. And
more love is put into the instruments of torture and no love at all is put into
the dialogue polish. The ritual of it is getting cheapened."

The first hint that this is not your average horror movie comes with the casting
of veteran actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, who play control room
bosses Hadley and Sitterson. The two men, using a range of influential
technology, force the five friends to embody horror stereotypes. While the kids
might start out as more than most contemporary horror victims, they become
increasingly powerless to resist Sitterson's and Hadley's ideas of how they
should behave. "The control room bosses are a stand-in for us, the viewer,"
explains Whedon. "But they also represent everything that we're up against as
storytellers: the need to hurt kids more and more on screen, to make them behave
foolishly, to make the death of them the points as opposed to the suspense
leading up to it."

"I think the danger with horror films is that they often treat the audience as
idiots," suggests Hemsworth. "This film respects the audience by questioning our
desire for horror films to begin with."

Whedon admits he's fascinated by this question. Why do we love horror movies so
much? "There's some part of us, some deep, dark, primitive part of us that wants
to sacrifice these people onscreen. I wanted to make a movie that explained why.
And so it's been a strange experience because on the one hand, we do straight up
horror. We definitely love the genre and the tropes of the genre but at the same
time we have a lot of questions about why and where it's going."

Goddard adds, "The horror movie is merely the jumping-off point for the inherent
questions about humanity that the genre suggests. Why, as a people, do we feel
the need to marginalize, objectify, and destroy youth? And this is not specific
to the genre, or movies in general, or our present-day culture. We've been doing
this to youth since we first began as a people. And this question -- the
question of why -- is very much at the heart of CABIN."

Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon first met when Goddard was hired as a writer on
Whedon's seminal television hit, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." A fruitful creative
partnership - and a strong friendship - formed, and the two filmmakers have
worked together consistently ever since. Along the way, THE CABIN IN THE WOODS
was born.

"Joss came up with the initial idea - we were looking for something to write
together, and he had this concept kicking around in his head. And as soon as I
heard the words 'cabin movie,' I said, 'I'm in." The two worked together to
develop the idea, and wrote the script quickly while on hiatus from their
various day jobs.

Once the script was completed, the film was greenlit by MGM Studios, thanks to
the support of producer Mary Parent. But due to corporate changes, the studio
was unable to continue with the film, making the way for Lionsgate to step in.
"You always want your movie to find the right home," says Whedon, "and there's
no question that Lionsgate is the right home for CABIN. So many of the films
that inspired CABIN were released by Lionsgate in the first place!"

Adds Goddard, "With some places, there's a bit of a horror disconnect, but with
Lionsgate I can say something in a meeting like, 'I'm thinking it should be red,
but not The Descent red, more High Tension red," and they don't look at me like
I'm insane. It definitely feels like we're speaking the same language. They've
been wonderful."

Goddard's and Whedon's goal was to cast the film with a mixture of established
actors, new faces, and "Whedonverse" veterans, and that's exactly what casting
directors Amy Britt and Anya Colloff, who had worked on both "Buffy The Vampire
Slayer" and "Angel," set out to accomplish. But the casting process was not
without its difficulties. "We ask a lot of our performers," Goddard points out.
"We ask them to vacillate between broad comedy and intense emotional drama. And
often, it's in the same scene - the same sentence, even. It's very hard to find
actors who can shift gears so quickly, the way we ask them to."

From the beginning, Goddard had dreamed of casting Richard Jenkins in the role
of control room boss Sitterson. After sending Jenkins the script on a Friday
night, the phone rang on Monday morning with Jenkins' enthusiastic commitment to
the project.

"I just loved the twists. I loved the take on it. It's fearless," says the
actor. "The control room is pretty mundane, you know. It's like, just the guys
in the office. And then you see what they're working on and it's bizarre. It's
just so great to throw those two worlds together."

Jenkins' acceptance quickly invigorated the rest of the casting process. Bradley
Whitford committed soon after for the role of Hadley, which left Goddard
marveling at their good fortune. "Both actors were our wildest dreams, and they
were the first people in it," he says.

Recalls Whitford, "I thought at first it was a sort of grade A, Defcon 5 horror
movie. But the more I thought about it, there was something very funny and smart
about it. It's such a clever way to deal with this genre. You see with Hadley
how the relentlessness of his job, and dealing with violence all the time, cuts
him off from a real experience of it."